Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan showed up [Monday] to hear the arguments and gave no indication she would recuse herself from judging the cases even though she had cheered enactment of Obamacare as an Obama political appointee and had personally assigned her top deputy in the Obama Justice Department to defend the law in federal court.

A federal law, 28 USC 455, says a Supreme Court justice must recuse from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned” or anytime he has “expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy” while he “served in governmental employment.”

During her confirmation process in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kagan assured the committee in written responses to its questionnaire that she would follow the “letter and spirit” of 28 U.S.C. 455.